What effect is there on learning when students are responsible for generating content?

Students no longer need to rely solely on their teacher for information. We can help them become independent learners by emphasizing those skills that allow them to gather knowledge from multiple sources and to generate their own resources that will supplement the basic curriculum offered in class.

Utilizing Online Text Books and Resources

• Many student text books are now found online. The advantages of these online resources are the many links to additional information that can add to student understanding. EXAMPLE
• Encourage the students to utilize any practice quizzes, video tutors, or additional reading links that go with your curriculum.
• Remind students of the online resources by putting a daily link to one of the activities or articles on your class wiki.

Begin a Lesson with a Content Search

• Students can help begin a lesson by conducting an Internet search for background information on the topic you plan to introduce. Have them create links to any resources they find on their wiki and provide a short summary of information they gather. After 5-10 minutes, have all the students save their wiki edit and then view their classmates' pages to see a collection of resources.
• If you create one page that has links to all the lab group or student wikis, the class will be able to easily access each other's work. EXAMPLE
• I was surprised when a student remembered to search the United Streaming website and was then able to offer the class a great video on center of gravity from which everyone learned a great deal.

Use the Student or Lab Group Wikis as Interactive Notebooks

• As you go through a unit, students can continue to collect information from their reading, information from lab experiments, links to resources, and pictures from class. All of these can be neatly organized on a wiki page or on a Page Flakes page. EXAMPLE, EXAMPLE 2, EXAMPLE 3
• Students can organize their wiki in several ways. They can keep a reverse chronological order journal beginning with the most recent entries. They can also organize their wiki page by topic and add new information beneath a topic heading whenever new information is found. EXAMPLE

Build a Podcast Library

• Students can learn to create basic podcasts that help summarize the knowledge that they have gained about a subject. These are not only useful for themselves but for all of the students in your class as well as in future classes. EXAMPLE
• Podcasts can be as simple as an audio podcast of the answers to review questions. Have all of the students share their responses and then generate a class response that includes all of the pertinent information and details. The recorded answers will help the students review for a test or can be used by absent students to check their work.
• One class period can be called upon to create a podcast and then the other class periods become the audience. Rotate the group that does the podcast and a sense of community grows even between the different class periods.

A Class Notes Wiki

• Keep track of all the unique class discoveries that occur during a lesson by ending class with a quick review. Have one student type on the wiki as the class summarizes the lesson.
• Post any links to articles that were utilized during the lesson each day.
• Keep an eye out for helpful simulations, animations, games, quizzes, and videos to enrich the lesson and post those as well.
• The class notes page of your wiki will become the place to go for anyone who misses class, the parents of your students, and the students who want to play a little longer with that fun simulation or game! EXAMPLE

Collaborative Research Projects

• Page Flakes is a great way to organize class research projects. Set up a page with a book marks flake, a message board, and a few notes flakes. Divide the research topics among the students. As they find good articles or sites about their topic, they can post what they find, including a URL, on the message board. After you check out the website, add a bookmark with tags to the bookmarks flake for the other students to see. Now when your next class begins, they can sort the bookmarks by topic and search for additional links to share with the first class. Give them credit for the links they find by adding a note in the book mark and the students initials. EXAMPLE